By Megan Ruge, Staff Writer
I have been thinking a lot lately about the sentiment of changing your mind. Specifically, I have been wondering why society shames people for changing their minds and why we view it as a bad thing.
As a senior nearing graduation, I look back and recall thousands of times that have I changed my mind. Think about it: I am sure that I will change my mind again in the near future, but I don’t regret the decisions that I have made.
Sure, sometimes I miss the things that I used to do and the things that I changed my mind about, but most often I find that these things were part of who I used to be and I am no longer that person.
For instance, I used to be an independent consultant for Perfectly Posh. I loved this, but it wasn’t making me any money and as much as I loved meeting people and playing with pampering products, coming back just didn’t seem possible after studying abroad.
When I never went back, I found that I didn’t miss it as much as I thought I would. This is just a small example.
And then there was the time that I thought I wanted to be a part of Christianity. I come from a long line of Jewish women, but I had learned so little about Judaism that I couldn’t be a part of the religion even if I wanted to at that point.
But, even as a young child, I felt the hole in my life that yearned for something to believe in and I filled that hole with Christianity, the closest religion to the one I knew as part of my heritage.
But even though I thought maybe this was what I wanted, I still felt drawn to Judaism. So, I did what I could to introduce Judaism into my life little by little, learning about it historically and then religiously through the fellowship I am now proud to call myself part of.
As time went on, I knew that I wanted to commit, become a fully Jewish woman and these were only the first steps on a journey I knew I belonged on. But it meant that I was changing my mind completely about religion and I felt like that was okay. I just needed the support.
Changing your mind is sometimes the most difficult and challenging decision you can make in your whole life. We must feel that we are justified in all decisions that we make. Change your mind and change your mind again, but never apologize for doing so. If these are the last words I write in The Quill, I hope that they bring us forward into a new age, an age where we are both selfish and selfless, but always unapologetically ourselves.